


Crossing the Delaware

by salvage



Category: Historical RPF, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Frat Hell, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 09:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10941744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: Liberty House threw a party, and Ben fell off the boat, if you will.“Caleb, we’re on the bathroom floor,” Ben mumbles.“And whose fault is that,” Caleb slurs into Ben’s skin.“Just one of the many questions I have about last night,” Ben replies.Caleb sighs again. “Spoiler alert. It’s yours.”





	Crossing the Delaware

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote about 90% of this fic in the year of our lord two thousand fifteen. Ask me about my in-progress degree in colonial/revolutionary-era America. I hate Turn.
> 
> Thanks, then and now and always, to Suzelle.

Ben regains consciousness slowly and extremely reluctantly. He’s aware, first, of the uncomfortable hardness of the surface upon which he is lying, and then, by extension, the soreness of his body: the tightness of his back, the twist of his neck, the way the shoulder he’s lying on is scrunched up almost to his ear. The ache of his calves and his knees and the hip that presses into the floor. The rawness of his throat, the dryness of his lips. The pounding of his head.

He cracks one eye open experimentally and regrets the decision immediately, though he’s glad to gain a little more information on his situation. He’s definitely lying on the floor of the upstairs bathroom of Liberty House. The bathroom is illuminated (overilluminated, in Ben’s hungover opinion) by sunlight streaming through the somewhat dingy, half-open window and directly into Ben’s eyeballs, aided marginally by the single working lightbulb in the five-bulb array over the sink. The blue and white tile floor is unmistakeable, as is the accumulated dust/hair/god knows what in the corner that Ben is facing. 

Ben becomes aware of two things simultaneously. One is that his head is cushioned on a folded, musty-smelling towel of unknown origin. The other is that there is an arm draped over his waist. After experiencing a split second of panic rising in his chest, Ben calms himself and, eyes still closed, takes a final, quiet breath.

“Ca—” Ben begins. His voice catches and he coughs, tears springing to the corners of his eyes from the rawness of his throat. “Caleb?” he rasps. 

The person lying behind Ben sighs, arm heavy and unmoving across Ben’s waist. 

“Caleb.” Ben says. Caleb’s—please let it be Caleb’s, Ben thinks desperately—knee is pressed to the back of Ben’s thigh and Ben can feel, through his thin t-shirt, the warmth radiating from Caleb’s body. Ben moves his arm slowly behind him to elbow Caleb in the chest. “Caleb.”

Caleb grumbles, the sound blessedly familiar to Ben’s ears, and presses forward to bury his nose at the nape of Ben’s neck. Ben can feel his mustache brush the sensitive skin just above his shirt collar. 

“Caleb, we’re on the bathroom floor,” Ben mumbles. 

“And whose fault is that,” Caleb slurs into Ben’s skin. 

“Just one of the many questions I have about last night,” Ben replies. 

Caleb sighs again. “Spoiler alert. It’s yours.” He removes his arm from Ben’s waist and Ben can hear him rub his hand over his face, the soft sound of Caleb brushing his mustache and beard into place. Caleb grumbles again.

Ben finally rolls over slightly, careful to keep his shoulder away from the unmentionable line of dust and hair that has accumulated at the juncture of wall and floor throughout the bathroom. One side of Caleb’s face is pink with marks, across the top of his cheek, his temple, where he was lying on the uneven edge of the folded towel. His eyes are still slightly unfocused and as he drops his gaze, Ben does too. He’s pulling a strip of what appears to be the shredded label of a beer bottle out of his beard. 

Ben squints at the label. “Who brought Hoptical Illusion to the party?” 

“Prob’ly Anna.” Caleb drops the paper strip and it flutters gently down to land on the bicep of his other arm. Ben follows its progress. Then he blinks.

“Caleb,” Ben says.

Caleb grunts. 

“Where’s your shirt.” 

Caleb affixes Ben with what Ben is sure Caleb believes is an icy stare. “ _Someone_ threw up on it.” 

“Oh,” Ben says. 

“It was you.”

“Yeah, I, uh. Figured.” 

The sound of a mourning dove cooing somewhere outside, in a peaceful, gentle dawn taking place somewhere wholly removed from this dingy, vomit-smelling bathroom, fills the silence. Ben’s mouth is dry and tastes like what he imagines death would taste like. He wonders where his phone is. 

“Can I buy you breakfast?” Ben asks.

“You’d fucking better.”

Ben sits up first, bracing his hand on the floor and twisting his body to the side so his spine cracks, one vertebra after another, like footsteps on bubble wrap. He drags himself to his feet, splashes water on his face and then drinks directly out of the sink, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror as long as he can but also trying to avoid looking at Caleb: the solid mass of Caleb’s body, his shoulders and his thick arms complemented and partitioned by the thick black lines of his tattoos, the hair on his chest and the backs of his arms as he drapes his forearm over his eyes to block the light, the farmer’s tan he gets every summer that hasn’t faded quite yet. 

There’s no towel for Ben to dry his face on, so he runs a hand over it one more time and then flicks the excess water off his fingers onto Caleb. Caleb grumbles. 

“After all I do for you, Tall-boy,” Caleb says. 

Ben hazards a glance at the mirror. “Oh my god,” he says aloud, and then turns on the faucet to attempt to stick his entire head under the water to tame his hair and also maybe drown himself. 

When Ben emerges from under the tap, twisting the hot water knob extra tight so it won’t leak the way it usually does, Caleb is sitting up and blearily staring at either Ben’s thighs or some indeterminate middle distance. 

“We’ll see if we can make coffee here,” Ben says, flattening and trying to vaguely style his hair. Water drips down his face and he tugs up the hem of his thin white shirt to blot his face and hair dry. Even sleep-deprived and hungover as he is, he can feel Caleb’s gaze on him. “Need a hand?” he asks.

Caleb’s eyes track up to Ben’s face, then he extends his arm so Ben can grab him by the elbow—the ornate anchor tattooed on the inside of his arm flashing into Ben’s vision for a moment before they clasp arms, thick lines holding in surprisingly delicate grayscale flowers—and tug him upward. The skin of Caleb’s inner arm is warm and smooth. He’s heavy and Ben staggers backward a step with momentum when he releases his arm. The wet spot on his shirt feels cool against his stomach.

Caleb jerks his head toward his room, then winces and presses both palms to his temples. “I think I just… my brain sloshed around for a sec,” he mumbles. “I was gonna say, I’m gonna get a shirt and there better be coffee for me.” He gives Ben a pointed look. 

“Asshole,” Ben says, even though he’s aware that in the grand scheme of things he’s the asshole right now. He turns and heads downstairs. 

A trash bag overflowing with beer cans and plastic cups is the first thing he sees, propped against the wall next to the door but listing dangerously to one side. There are clusters of cups stacked on the floor next to it, as though someone tried to clean up the trash but was too drunk to remember where the unused trash bags live. 

Ben’s glad Caleb didn’t take Ben’s shoes off, because as he walks across the living room, edging around the beer pong table still set up in the middle of it, he can hear the distinct and unpleasant sound of the rubber soles sticking to certain spots on the hardwood. He refuses to consider who will have the job of mopping the floor later today. 

Someone is passed out on the couch, but their face is pressed to the cushions so he can’t see who it is. There’s a button-down shirt tossed over the back of the couch, one arm trailing to the floor; it takes Ben a moment to realize that it’s familiar because it’s the overshirt he was wearing last night. 

The digital clock on the stove reads 7:24. He takes each of the beer cans on the counter in turn and tips it upside down over the sink to be sure there’s nothing left in it before tossing it into one of the half-full trash bags that have conveniently been left around the kitchen until the smell of warm, flat beer in one half-full can nauseates him so much that he has to leave it on its side in the sink and open the door to the back porch to breathe in the clean morning air. 

Hercules Mulligan is sitting on the porch smoking a cigarette. 

“Good morning,” Hercules says with a wave. 

“Hey,” Ben manages. It’s cool outside, the air crisp and dry, the warm yellow sunlight filtered through a few trees. Several violently red cups dot the lawn, bright against the soft mottled green-brown-orange of the dying grass and the leaves that have fallen around the dark bases of the trees. “Do you want some coffee?”

“That’d be great,” Hercules says. “Feeling okay?” 

“Eh,” Ben replies. 

Hercules laughs, easily, as though commiserating instead of judging. “We still beat ‘em, don’t worry. You’ll be with us next time.” He smiles widely at Ben. 

“Yeah,” Ben says, still feeling a little bitter at himself. He takes another breath, the air cool and sweet, then goes back inside. 

The frat house smells like a frat house. Ben immediately opens the kitchen window. He stares at the ancient coffeemaker for a long moment, weighing his options, before gathering his energy and heading back upstairs. 

He opens the door to his room quietly, partly out of a sincere respect for Nathan, his roommate, who (as he discovers) is indeed asleep in the room, and partly because if he wakes Nathan up he’ll have to share his good coffee and Nathan will want to come get breakfast with Ben and Caleb and, though Caleb has never mentioned it, Ben suspects that Caleb doesn’t actually like Nathan. Ben successfully retrieves the brown paper bag full of dark roast coffee and heads back to the kitchen to begin the tedious process of coaxing the coffeemaker to give him coffee. 

Ben is leaning against the kitchen counter, hoping that if he doesn’t look at the coffeemaker he won’t incur its anger, when Caleb finally shuffles downstairs. He’s fully dressed, wearing a hoodie unzipped over a flannel shirt and a beanie pulled over his hair, and he’s wearing sunglasses.

“That’s brilliant,” Ben says. 

Caleb reaches into the pocket of his flannel button-down and extracts a second pair of sunglasses. He unfolds the arms and reaches out to gently place them on Ben’s face; Ben ducks his head and lowers his gaze and Caleb’s hand is a little unsteady, Ben can feel the tremble as the plastic arms of the sunglasses slide lightly over his skin, push through the short hair at his temples. 

“Oh my god.” He reaches up to settle the glasses on his face and suddenly the world seems to have been turned down to a far more tolerable volume. “Thank you.” 

“Is that the Ben Tallmadge Secret Stash I smell brewing?” Caleb asks. 

“Only for you,” Ben replies, tone light enough that Caleb won’t be able to guess how true it really is. 

Caleb huffs a little laugh and stands next to Ben, close enough that their arms are pressed lightly together. Ben breathes slowly and stares at the beer pong table in the middle of the room, cups stacked at each end. The mourning dove coos again, sounding closer than it did when he was upstairs. 

“Who’s that on the couch?” Caleb asks. 

“Dunno.” The coffeemaker gurgles and starts dripping. 

There’s a breeze coming in through the window, pleasant smelling but a little chilly, and Ben shivers involuntarily, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s halfway through psyching himself up to go upstairs yet again and grab another shirt or something when Caleb shifts beside him. He rolls his shoulders back, the collar of his shirt pulled to the side and exposing the dark pointed edges of the tattoo below his ear, and tugs at the cuffs of his hoodie, stripping it off and silently handing it to Ben. 

“I—”

Caleb presses the sweatshirt into Ben’s chest. “Take it.” 

The hoodie is light gray, a little big on Ben though he's taller than Caleb is, and it’s warm and smells like Caleb. Ben zips it up and buries his hands in the pockets and tries not to think about how he wants to pull the hood up and burrow into it, how he wants to turn and lean down to press his face into the soft junction of Caleb’s neck and shoulder where the collar of his shirt meets his ink-dark skin and the prickly-soft curls of his beard. He’s only marginally successful. 

The coffeemaker gurgles again. Ben turns around to look at it, just to distract himself, and he feels Caleb watching him. Caleb’s eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses and his mouth is hidden behind his mustache but he is smiling a little, Ben can tell. Ben is exhausted and his head is still pounding and he feels queasy and his whole body aches but he can't help smiling back, heart rate picking up when he impulsively sways to the side to nudge Caleb’s arm with his. 

“I can't believe I missed, like, the whole party taking care of your drunk ass,” Caleb says, smiling wider now, leaning closer to Ben’s side. 

“I can’t—” Ben begins, but they both start when they hear a loud thump from the living room. 

Abe stumbles off the couch, swaying on his feet for a moment before bracing himself with a hand on the beer pong table. When he removes his hand he looks at it critically, as though he’s touched something distasteful. “What’s… oh.” He finally looks up at Ben and Caleb, standing very close together in the kitchen, both wearing sunglasses. “Hey.” 

“Woody,” Caleb says solemnly. 

Ben belatedly and reluctantly peels himself away from where he has somehow pressed himself against Caleb’s side. The coffee pot is nearly full and he fusses around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets as quietly as he can until he finds four clean-looking mugs (two of which he rinses out as an extra precaution). 

Abe looks at Ben with undisguised love when Ben hands him a mug of coffee, taking a reverent sip with his eyes fluttering closed. “You are a hero and a scholar, Benjamin Tallmadge,” he says.

Caleb is silent with both hands wrapped around his mug but he leans into Ben a little, a line of warmth down Ben’s side. 

“Here,” Ben says, handing the fourth mug to Abe. “Take this outside to Mulligan, he’s on the porch.” 

Abe goes, pushing at the handle of the door with his elbow so he doesn’t have to put down the coffee mugs. The door bounces shut slowly behind him, the latch not quite catching; though they’re watching it, neither Ben nor Caleb goes to close it. 

“See this, this is why I spent all night taking care of you,” Caleb says, holding up the coffee mug before taking another sip. 

“Because if I choked on my own vomit you would have had to make your own coffee?” 

“Have you tasted the garbage water everyone else in this godforsaken house calls ‘coffee’?” 

“Why do you think I have the secret stash?”

“And this is why I keep you alive, Tall-boy.”

“I knew it wasn’t for my good looks,” Ben jokes, mock disappointed, heart rate picking up. 

Caleb shrugs. “I mean, they don’t hurt.”

Ben gazes at Caleb in the bright corner of light to the side of the wide, comfortable dark square the sunglasses make in his field of vision. Caleb’s beanie is sliding back on his head a little, letting slightly flattened curls of hair spring out from underneath. His skin is paling from its summer tan; Ben remembers the time a few years ago when Caleb fell asleep at Robert Moses beach with sunglasses on and for almost a month had deeply embarrassing white glasses-shaped rings over his eyes in an otherwise sunburned face. Ben had taken pity on him and helped him put sunscreen on the burned parts of his face as he tried to “even it out.” He remembers how Caleb’s face had twitched as Ben had spread the cool sunscreen on his forehead and cheeks and nose, the excessive warmth of Caleb’s skin, the tightening around his eyes which he had closed even though Ben wasn’t going anywhere near. The surprising softness of Caleb’s beard when he had brushed it with the heel of his hand. 

He remembers that summer—he remembers every summer growing up, driving with Caleb, Sam, William if they could convince him, sometimes Abe and Anna, and sometimes more people, too, friends and girlfriends and friends of friends, crammed into the Tallmadge family minivan with the windows open because the air conditioning in that car had begun to waver in reliability as it approached its fifteenth year, smelling the sea air as they drove over the bridge to Fire Island. The morning sun would be bright; they’d leave early so that they could get to Field 5 before it was too crowded, grabbing giant paper cups of coffee and breakfast sandwiches at that one deli they all loved on 25A whose name nobody could ever remember, watching the sun rise higher in the sky as they drove south on the causeway, cheering when they saw the trees and the twisting inlets of Captree Island because they were almost there, they’d almost made it, one car in a line of dozens heading toward the huge brick water tower like pilgrims to some arcane monument, and then the crowded parking lot and the bright hot sand and the crashing waves. 

He still thinks of Caleb like that: in the passenger seat of the minivan, his right arm braced vertically in the open window, fingers tapping on the top edge of the car door in time with the music they were listening to, face bare though he had already started to shave in their later years of high school. When Caleb would gesture while talking and his arm would catch the sunlight that streamed in the opposite window of the car, his tan skin and the dark hairs on his arm would be illuminated in the white-gold early morning sunlight, rich and bright.

“You doin’ alright, Benny boy?” Caleb asks. 

“Oh. Yeah.” Ben’s voice feels a little rough and he knocks back some more coffee, nearly scalding his tongue. “Do you want to get breakfast?” 

“In a minute.” 

“Okay.” Ben hears something outside, like someone’s clothes rustling or maybe the light breeze skittering some dried leaves across the porch, and he pauses to watch the door for a moment before speaking again. “Thanks for taking care of me last night. I mean it. That’s… thanks.” 

“What was I gonna do, leave you in the bathtub while I went back downstairs and kept on bonging beers? Nah,” Caleb says, voice light, like it’s nothing. 

“You coulda.” Ben tries to match Caleb’s tone. 

“No.” Caleb is serious now. “I couldn’t.” They’ve turned, nearly facing each other now, and Caleb looks a little stupid, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, hat sliding off his head, eyebrows raised. Eyebrows raised significantly, like this means something. Ben’s tired and hungover and he really, really doesn’t want to misread this. 

“I’m,” Ben begins, intending to say something about being grateful, or lucky, but he removes one hand from the coffee cup, palm still warm with radiated heat, and he slides it under the unbuttoned collar of Caleb’s shirt, fingers curling around the back of his neck, thumb pushing up into soft curls of Caleb’s beard, and Caleb leans into it, leans into him, steps forward and presses their chests together and tilts his chin up. Ben kisses him.

Caleb’s mouth is warm and his beard is soft, catching a little on Ben’s stubble, his lips still against Ben’s for an agonizing second during which Ben remembers that he didn’t brush his teeth this morning and they have been friends since Ben’s little brother fell and skinned both of his knees in the parking lot of the little beach near both their houses and Caleb led him, calmly, Samuel’s small chubby hand held in his, back to Ben and his family and oh, god, their families are friends, too, and they have a decade and a half of secrets and plans and shared memories and embarrassing stories and what if—and then Caleb’s kissing him back, mouth moving fractionally against Ben’s, sighing a little, and their lips part and meet again: coffee-bitter, so sweet. Ben’s eyes have closed. Caleb kisses him slowly, nothing more than a prolonged press of slightly parted lips, almost chaste but for the dizzying intimacy of Caleb’s little breaths against Ben’s skin and the warm press of their bodies, shaken by their pounding hearts.

Ben tilts his head slightly and their sunglasses click together, surprising them both into jerking away slightly; Ben feels like he’s been awoken from a trance but Caleb just smiles, placing his coffee cup on the counter, taking his sunglasses off. Ben does the same, blinking a little, feeling his face twist a bit, feeling Caleb’s warm hand come up and the callused edge of his thumb gently drift over Ben’s cheekbone until Ben stops squinting in the bright light. 

Caleb’s eyes are golden brown, framed by the shadows formed in the creases of his face when he smiles but irises bright like sunlit amber. 

“That was okay?” Ben asks, though he’s pretty sure it was okay. 

“Yeah,” Caleb says, a little breathlessly. His fingers drift down the side of Ben’s neck and he tucks them under the collar of his hoodie that Ben is wearing, his hand snug around the juncture of Ben’s neck and shoulder, the pad of his thumb resting over the jut of one of Ben’s collarbones. “You still have to buy me breakfast, though.” 

“Right.” Ben touches Caleb’s waist because he can, slides his arms around Caleb’s back because he can, draws them close together. Caleb settles against him. 

“A fancy breakfast, too,” Caleb says, though he’s looking at Ben’s mouth when he says it. “I’m not a cheap date.” 

“Of course,” Ben murmurs as Caleb rises up on his toes, not mentioning the Pabst Blue Ribbon that Caleb was drinking last night only because Caleb is kissing him again, his moustache soft against Ben’s upper lip. Ben takes the soft curve of Caleb’s lower lip gently between his teeth and he feels Caleb’s quick inhale, the tightening of his hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben licks into his mouth and presses his hands to the solid planes of Caleb’s back, fingers splayed. He wants to touch Caleb’s hair so he does, pushing his fingers through the slightly greasy curls at the nape of Caleb’s neck as the beanie falls to the floor. Someone makes a soft, desperate noise; distantly, Ben is pretty sure it’s him. 

Ben draws back just enough to take a breath though his body is still pressed to Caleb’s. Caleb kisses the corner of his mouth, then the side of his jaw. 

“We probably shouldn’t be doing this in the kitchen,” Ben says. 

“Mmm,” Caleb grumbles. One of his hands sneaks under the hem of Ben’s shirt. 

“We should go… go to breakfast.” 

“Mmm.” Caleb tucks his fingers under the waistline of Ben’s jeans, his palm flat at the small of Ben’s back. “On the other hand,” Caleb says into the soft skin under Ben’s jaw, “it’s very early.”

“It is very early,” Ben agrees, rocking forward into Caleb. 

“They might not even be open yet,” Caleb continues. 

“It is very early.” Ben tucks his arms between them and begins unbuttoning Caleb’s flannel shirt. 

“Maybe we should just go back upstairs,” Caleb says. 

“Wait a little while.” 

“Exactly.” 

Ben kisses Caleb’s mouth again and for a long, still moment they stand together, kissing, the mourning dove’s low trill drifting in through the open window with the fresh cool breeze. 

“Take the coffees,” Caleb says as they part and Ben looks at him again, the soft, flushed gleam of his lower lip, the joyous crinkles around his eyes.

The diner, of course, is open 24 hours. They go upstairs.


End file.
